How Digital Influence Affects The Way Your Customers Buy

April 24, 2013

You don’t need me to tell you that we need to increase and improve our customers’ experiences for them to develop loyalty and advocacy to our businesses. Depending too much on new customers rather than selling more to existing ones is a sure-fire way to send yourself into oblivion.

Customer experiences are the new way to measure success in sales. They provide the foundation for everything else we build on. So what is the impact on people when they share experiences with others? How important is the measurement of their experience and how influential are people’s views?

Understanding how your customer thinks is the only way you can develop meaningful sales strategies. It also helps you to inspire a vision for what their overall experience could and should be. It helps you identify what your brand image should be now and in the future. And it will show you opportunities to determine where and how you can create value, deal with expectations and build activities that will drive further experiences and bring benefits to your business.

The digital age and social media has brought to the surface the specific ways that people buy today. A recent survey by Crowdtap has shown how the influence of peers has catapulted that particular medium of choice to the top fo the list of factors determining what and how we buy. Their ‘Power of Peer Influence’ showed the top ten influence factors on how people make decisions today.

The question was: What influences your buying decision? The percentage of people who completely or somewhat trusted the source were: (top ten answers)

92%…..Recommendations from people I know

70%…..Consumer opinions from people online

58%…..Editorial comments

58%…..Branded websites

50%…..Emails I signed up for

47%…..Ads on TV

47%…..Brand sponsorship

47%…..Ads in magazines

47%…..Billboards and ads outdoors

46%…..Ads in newspapers

This 2012 survey shows 92% of people surveyed were influenced by the opinions of people they know. 70% of people stated that they were affected by people’s opinions online.

This Crowdtap survey showed that:

* 70% of people were influenced online.

* 61% were influenced by word-of-mouth, either in person or on the phone.

Your job, then, is to ensure your business keeps up to date with the dynamism that the market is showing. You have to move faster than your prospects and customers in order to define and lead customer experiences.

Hi! I'm the founder and Managing Director of MTD Sales Training - we offer sales training solutions for companies both large and small. I'm blessed to work with 25 of the most talented trainers in the UK....well, I did recruit them! 😉
Today, we've delivered training in over 23 countries to over 3,500 different organisations and 100,000 staff.
Our clients include Xerox, Friends Provident, Starbucks, Taylor Wimpey, CISCO, Allianz and Lloyds TSB to name but a few.